We're Cuckoo for Coco

In the words of the immortal Buddy the Elf, "Good news! I saw a dog today." Seeing a dog can definitely be good news. They are great emotional therapy! And fortunately for all of us in the Barrett household, we have seen a dog today...and every day, for the last few months! We've seen this adorable dog:

 It's the newest member of our family: Coco Barrett!

Our girls have wanted a dog for years. As soon as Lorelai was old enough to speak, she started asking for a dog. In fact, for about 8 months when she was 5, Lorelai was a dog; she walked around the house on all fours, barking instead of talking, all day long. Her younger sisters quickly followed suit, and "When are we going to get a dog?" became a constant, never-ending refrain that has haunted me for years.

Everywhere we went, the kids perked up immediately when a dog was in the vicinity. I can't tell you how many dog owners we accosted over the years, with my girls' constant pleas to pet the "doggie." Thankfully, we learned from those experiences how to approach unfamiliar dogs, and how to treat them with caution and great care. Luckily, my girls were never attacked or bitten (very luckily; their affection could be a bit smothering at times).

Out of the whole family, I was the one least inclined to get a dog. It's not that I hate dogs; quite the contrary, I love them! But I was also the only family member that had ever owned a dog before (Nathan's family had a dog for a few months when he was a child, but they were primarily a cat family). I knew how much attention, care, & training dogs needed, and how much work it would be to own one. The thought of owning one was a bit daunting; I knew it would be like having another small child around! Also, I wanted to wait until a few of our outstanding debts could be cleared before taking on the financial and logistical burden of a dog. These reasonable objections were met with bitter dismay by my girls, who became convinced over time that I was a mean old grump who delighted in crushing their dreams.

For years I pleaded patience, and bit by bit I was worn down. We managed to buy ourselves a year or two by purchasing guinea pigs for the girls as "gateway pets." It was good training for the girls to have an animal that required daily care & feeding. As the years passed--as the girls grew older, as our car payments ended--I knew that soon the time for adoption would come.

We decided early on that we would adopt a dog from a local animal shelter. We didn't want to visit a pet store or risk contacting an unscrupulous breeder; besides, we didn't have the cash for that sort of thing! We thought it would be nice to "rescue" a dog. A couple of years ago, Nathan volunteered for a few months at the Animal League of Green Valley, a local no-kill animal shelter that always has lots of lonely dogs and cats looking for new homes. We promised the girls last summer that the dog would be an early Christmas present, of sorts; we would adopt our dog from the League in December of 2016, after all our big vacations were done, so we would have plenty of time to get to know it.

This sent the girls into a state of excitement that is hard to explain (although I bet they could have been diagnosed with a pathological obsession). They were probably more excited by the prospect of a dog than by any vacation we could have taken (indeed, on more than one occasion during both our San Diego and Utah vacations, the girls would shout, "Once this trip is over, we'll be that much closer to getting our dog!!" I mean, we're at the beach, or Sea World, and still all they could think about was the dog. Lorelai visited the Animal League's web site every day for at least three months, scanning the lists of dogs available and creating lists of dogs she wanted to visit, ranked by preference, breed...all sorts of considerations. It was incredible to me to see their level of focus and interest.

Finally, after our Utah Thanksgiving trip, we agreed that we could visit the Animal League and start "browsing" the dogs, hopefully finding one from our list that was a good fit for our family. After just one visit to the Animal League, though, we realized that the animals appearing on the website weren't always reasonable choices...many of them were not even housed on-site, or had personality issues that meant we couldn't even visit them.

Despite our initial disappointment, we still ended up enjoying our visits to the League, and we met several beautiful, sweet, fun-loving dogs. There were three in particular that caught our affection, for a number of reasons. But in the end, this is the dog we agreed upon:

"Colleen" was listed as a "Lab mix" (most of the dogs at the shelter are mixed-breed; we hope to get a DNA test done later this year to verify what her genetic makeup is). She was estimated to be a little more than a year old. Colleen had been found alone (likely abandoned) in Green Valley, and had been staying at the shelter for just about a month when we saw her. Oddly, she has a short stumpy tail (in all probability, it had been "docked" by a previous owner). We were a little sad not to have a dog with a long, wagging tail, but otherwise we thought she was a sweet, lovely animal.

Of our three finalists, she was the best combination of size (she was a good, medium-sized dog, and thus managed easily by all three of our girls), hair (although she does shed, her hair is fairly short and isn't too difficult to clean up), and especially temperament (she hits a nice middle ground between "calm/cuddly" and "playful/lively"). There was a lot of discussion about whether Colleen would be a good fit for our home, and after careful consideration by all family members, we decided the answer was "yes."

There was just one thing: the name "Colleen" had to go! The Animal League often does a good job naming their stray animals, but "Colleen" sounded way too "old lady" for us. We initially thought we would call her "Coal" (as both a diminutive of Colleen, and a sly Christmas allusion: "We got 'Coal' in our stocking for Christmas!"). However, the name seemed a bit too masculine for her, so we changed it to "Coco," a more playful (and gender-neutral) choice. Everyone liked the name, and so Coco she became!

We were both excited and a little nervous to bring her home. Coco seemed very interested in the house and explored it carefully without damaging anything. She was, however, very interested in poor Cucumber, our lone remaining guinea pig.

It was pretty clear her instincts were at war with our desires; she really wanted to eat that tasty-looking rodent! One day, after leaving the house for a short errand, we returned home to find the metal door to the cage bashed in, and the cage itself hanging half off the table. Apparently, Coco had decided to "play" with Cucumber. After that, the whole family took turns keeping Cucumber in their rooms, to save him from Coco's attention. As it turned out, Cucumber passed away in January of this year, just more than a month after Coco moved in. The poor thing was getting old anyway, but I suspect the added stress of living with a large beastly dog speeded his demise.

So far, having Coco at home has been a very positive experience. She is a sweet, friendly dog who is not afraid of any humans. She will occasionally growl or bark at the doorbell or unexpected visitors, but the majority of the time she trots up to them, stubby tail wagging in greeting, and tries to greet them with a slobbery kiss. She has a fairly submissive demeanor; she listens to our commands and is fairly meek when more aggressive personalities are around (both dog and human). She is actually more shy around other dogs than people; when we are out walking, she sometimes crouches down and holds very still when other dogs approach; she wants to "check them out" before getting comfortable.

So far, we have kept Coco pretty close to home, but we try to take her on daily (or twice-daily) walks, as well as a visit to the dog park every few days. We have taken her on a few outings, though; she has now been to Madera Canyon twice! Once on a snowy day in January with our family...

...and once just last week for Spring Break, with many of our friends. We visited a small waterfall at the base of the canyon, and Coco loved splashing around in the cool spring runoff. It was a fun morning, not just because we got to spend it with our close friends, but because we got to take Coco on a fun outing that was a break from her normal routine.

We hope we can take her on camping trips and other longer vacations in the future!

We strongly suspect Coco has had training before, likely from a previous owner. She is already potty trained; she has only peed in the house three times in three months...and two of those times were the first two days here! She has also quickly learned most of the tricks we've taught her (especially "sit" and "stay"). Just this month, we started obedience training with her at a local PetCo, and the wonderful trainer there has given us a lot of help getting her more disciplined. She learns new commands very quickly, and is very good at sensing our moods. The dogs I grew up with were much more high-strung and panicked easily...in a word, they could often be pretty dense. Coco is a much more intelligent dog; I can tell when she is considering her options, and her emotions are more guarded. She is also pretty calm; small dogs can be yapping loudly in her ear, and she will be silent and quiet, choosing not to descend into a shouting match (at least not right away).

Of course, there have been a few problems along the way. After all, Coco is still a young dog, and she has several puppy-like behaviors. When she gets wiggly and playful, she likes to "nip" our feet, clothing, and hands. The nipping rarely hurts us, but it's still a habit we hope to do away with eventually. She often gets over-excited when she's on a leash and will tug uncomfortably on the lead (especially when we take her to the local dog park, one of her very favorite places; it's all we can do to keep her from running away from us as she joyfully heads up the hill to the park).

Craziness at the bark park, when Coco meets her "twin" Leo. They played and wrestled for hours!

Probably the biggest problem we face with Coco is her chewing. This isn't unique to Coco; lots of young dogs love to chew anything laying around. She is calmer than some dogs, but we have still had to be careful about what we leave lying around. In three days, she completely demolished two boxes of Kleenex. She's also ripped the faces off of a few of the girl's stuffed animals, and chewed up a couple of action figures. She likes to snack on our food, too, when she can get it; at Christmastime, with all the extra food laying around, she helped herself more than once to some of our cookies or candy. She somehow managed to devour a whole sleeve of gourmet chocolate-peanut-butter Oreo cookies (thankfully with no ill effect). On another occasion, she ate all of Aurora's leftover chocolate birthday cupcakes (again with no ill effect; she must have a stomach of steel!). We are learning bit by bit to lock up our valuables, to carefully put away all our electronic devices, and to store our food and valuables behind closed doors!

There is one other interesting aspect of Coco's character that has been frustrating at times. Most trainers these days encourage dog owners to have their dogs sleep in crates. But Coco has been wary of the crate we bought for her, from the very first day she arrived at our home. Trainers insist that dogs love the crate and feel comfortable inside it; Coco, however, is very nervous and refuses to go inside at times. Nathan and I tried to force her inside early on, and it was a mistake; she fought us terribly, and even with our combined strength, we couldn't get her inside. She's a strong beast! Anyway, we tried having her sleep in the bathroom downstairs for a few nights. This, too, did not work; she cried and scratched frantically on the door. Eventually one night, she chewed up the doorframe of the bathroom(!), and then leaped onto the sink and ate the nightlight plugged into the wall(!). Finally, exhausted and desperate, we moved her dog "pad" up next to the girls' bedrooms (we do not want her sleeping in any of our bedrooms, but thought the proximity to us would be comforting to her). That seemed to finally calm her down; she slept in the hall for several nights.

Over time, she has moved downstairs and likes to sleep on the couch. I was worried about this at first, but she is on very good behavior at night; she doesn't wander around causing mischief, nor does she wake us up for a midnight bathroom break. She sleeps peacefully through the night! However, it seems that she will not sleep peacefully through the night when she is in an enclosed space.

After Coco got spayed. She looked surprised, but not upset, that Aurora used her as a pillow!

We haven't given up on the crate just yet. We have put comfortable blankets inside it; we have put her food bowl in it at times, and lately we have started putting "special treats" (toys, hot dogs, etc.) inside, to help it feel more welcoming. Progress has been slow, but it has been happening; Coco now takes regular naps inside the crate (she's only spent all night in it twice, and both times avoided the crate afterwards for a while; we have to work her up to nightly visits, methinks). She will now venture inside periodically throughout the day, and occasionally go there when she wants a little quiet time. In fact, as of this writing (late at night on a Monday), she is comfortably snoozing in the crate! We hope we can get her sleeping inside it regularly...it will be very helpful if we are ever going to go on vacation without her! We have often wondered if her previous masters kept her crated for most of her life, and that's why she is so nervous about it. We hope we can restore some of her trust, and we are praying it won't take much longer.

On occasion, I have slept on the couch or out on our futon, and Coco is quick to cuddle up to me. She also loves to hang out with us when we are watching TV, holding family home evening, or even jumping on the trampoline.

Coco likes being around people; she is always very relieved when we return home after being away for several hours.

How can you not love this face??

 She is such a sweet, good-natured dog and we are all falling in love with her. It has been bumpy at times, but we are so grateful to the Animal League for steering us toward a dog that was a really good fit for our family. I hope we can enjoy many happy years together, and that she can be a faithful, loving companion to us and a friend to all our visitors!